Get Hard [2015] ★★

Will Ferrell can find the dumb fun in anything. Whether he gets naked and shows his private parts or not, he makes me laugh. And he does it in good movies (“Elf”, “Old School”, “Anchorman”, “Talladega Nights”, “Blades of Glory”) and horrible movies (“Bewitched”, “Kicking and Screaming”). Hell, Ferrell is funny when he just drops into a movie for a few scenes (“Starsky and Hutch”, “Wedding Crashers”). So naturally I was stoked to see him in a new comedy with Kevin Hart (“The Wedding Ringer“). But the air goes out of that air balloon pretty damn quick. The problem with “Get Hard”, about a wrongfully convicted investment banker who has 30 days to prepare for prison life with the help of the man who washes his car, is that it’s only partially funny. What screenwriters Jay Martel, Ian Robert and Etan Cohen have cooked up is nonstop raunch that decides too late that it needs to grow a heart. And after watching the picture for a while, I noticed my foot was tapping involuntarily. I realized I was marking time, just waiting for it to be over. I laughed a few times, but clearly not enough. Still, Ferrell and Hart make “Get hard” seem a lot better than it is. They’re a pair of livewires and each earns a star in my review. The movie would literally be nothing without them.